A Night at Quebec's Ice Hotel

 An Ice Time In Quebec -- previously published in ThunderPress and posted on sites by Quebec Tourism.   It's not for everyone, but those looking for a very different experience should consider spending a night at the Waldorf-Astoria of igloos, the famous Ice Hotel.

Quebec bikers are crazy and get a little out there during the depths of winter.  I was in Quebec City to attend the largest bike show in the province and make the contacts necessary to carry out my summer touring plans.  Determined to figure out what riders did when the snow was ass-deep for months at a time and temperatures dropped to negative double digits, I booked a room in the Waldorf-Astoria of igloos, the world-famous Hôtel de Glace (Ice Hotel) in nearby Duchesnay.

There’s only one ice hotel in North America and, being made entirely of ice and snow, it’s not a four-season resort.  Every December a new hotel is constructed and every April it melts away in a natural rhythm that has been inescapable since the last Ice Age.  With the wind blowing out of the northwest and the temperature at minus-19 degrees it seemed that another Ice Age was imminent. I stashed my gear in the heated Pavillon Talik and headed over to the hotel.

     

I was surprised at the relative warmth even as my breath rose hard and white on the still air.  In the lobby a delicate bouquet of ivory flowers and green leaves screams in sensory contrast.  Ahead stretches a reception hall in a style that I can only describe as Tolkienesque:  walls the color of the finest Carrara marble carved in bas-relief beneath a Gothic arched ceiling supported by crystal-clear pillars of ice.  In the center of the hall a massive ice chandelier infused with ever changing spectral hues glows in dim splendor. With my steps leaving waffled imprints on a floor raked with Zen precision, I advance, expecting at any moment to encounter an ice queen or perhaps the White Witch of Narnia.  Soon joined by my cohorts we set off to explore this fantasy world of ice and snow – and to find our rooms for the night. 

Detailed descriptions are useless—the hotel is built to a different design and the sculptural theme differs each year. Embedded LED lighting transforms 500 tons of carved ice and 15,000 tons of sculpted snow into surrealistic visions.  Animal skins cover chairs and benches carved from special ice that’s made in Montreal and trucked north. Foam mattresses grace crystalline beds.  One suite has a fireplace and a hot tub; my monastic room has a floor to ceiling pierced wall of ice as the footboard to the bed.  Others feature elaborately carved walls with fantasy designs, dragons, hockey players, and artifacts or photographs embedded in blocks of ice. 

It was time out for supper.  Since the ice hotel doesn’t boast a kitchen--they should open a sushi bar--we quickly walk to the government owned and operated Pavillon Horizon.  To our surprise and delight we discover an inexpensive five-star restaurant with impeccable service, a wine list to die for, and a menu so exquisite that it nearly results in paralysis of decision for six devoted foodies.  Such was simply not expected in a rustic outpost on the edge of the Canadian wilderness. 

In our absence the public spaces of the hotel have been transformed from a Nordic ice palace into an ultra-chic nightclub.  Music pulses in the acoustically flawless Ice Bar while colors sluice through ice and soak in walls of snow a meter thick. In one corner, imprisoned on four sides by thermal glass, a fire burns in heatless, décor-designed splendor while guests frantically sculpt ice on workbenches supplied for this purpose.  The bartender pours concoctions into the rocks--the results looking like a cliché 1960s B-grade sci-fi movie--while a demonic face looks over his shoulder.  I comment that my father had always admonished that I’d earn a one-way ticket to Hell.  Bill retorts that this couldn’t be Hell, because the Devil would only allow a single drink for all eternity and we were getting refills.  Point well taken.  Meanwhile the women have disappeared and there was only one place they can be.

In the courtyard hot tubs gurgle beneath a full moon so crisp it didn’t seem real.  Fighting against the Artic night none of the tubs can push the water temperature above 98 degrees.  All guests go through a briefing before being allowed to stay the night.  One of the admonishments was not to go to bed until your hair was completely dry or risk becoming literally frozen to the bed.  Likewise, don’t put eyeglasses on the side table: they’ll freeze into the ice.  Therefore the inevitable becomes an ad hoc experiment: how many nearly naked people, whom one is not on intimate terms with, can be packed into a 6 x 4 foot sauna (eleven is the correct answer).

Dressed in a bathrobe and hiking boots I contemplate what was learned while padding back to my room through snow tunnels.  The past couple of days had been spent snowshoeing, dog sledding, and watching teams of athletes competitively push and paddle special ice canoes across the treacherous pack ice and currents of the St. Lawrence River. I had checked out arcane machines designed for winter riders and watched thousands of people of all ages reveling in Winter Carnival activities in spite –or defiance-- of the frigid weather.  Snuggling deep into my Artic sleeping bag I come to understand that Quebec bikers aren’t crazy, but rather are infused with a spirit that our puritanical American culture seems to lack.  Up here they call it joie de vivre – the joy of living.